


Locusts In The Grass

by Missy



Category: Carrie - All Media Types, Carrie - Stephen King
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Complicated Monsters, Complicated Relationships, Crueltide, Cultlike Atmospheres, Diary/Journal, F/F, Horror, Mind Control, Yuletide Madness 2017, Yuletide Treat, diary entries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 23:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13041624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: An account of life in Christ's Blood, Maine - formerly Chamberlain - under the rule of Carrietta White.  By Susan Snell, ages eighteen to forty.





	Locusts In The Grass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoundandColor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoundandColor/gifts).



_June 20th, 1974_

She’s been curing herself. Day by day, step by step, she’s getting taller and stronger. I’ve been with her the whole time – because she says I’m the only one she can trust. The only one who cared enough to come looking for her when everything falls apart.

It’s warm enough now that I don’t mind that we’ve been living in a tent in what used to be the library. Most everyone who didn’t die last month is either too young or dumb or old or sick to go anywhere, and while Carrie was out of it the Red Cross came and gave us food and shelter and tried to fix the mess. They're the ones who brought in a couple of construction companies who came in to fix things. I’ve been taking food from my house, which is still standing to feed her.

I sometimes wonder if I’m doing the right thing, and how far my sense of pity should stretch. Carrie’s not a wholly bad person – she just does bad things. 

That’s what she tells me, when we talk soundlessly in the dark.

We’ll see how she is when she starts moving around again.

_July 4th , 1977_

Carrie’s begun to try to govern us. First, she commanded the Red Cross to leave; then she demanded the government leave and take its strangers with it. 

In case you’re wondering, she did that by lifting a tank with her mind and sending it end over end spinning until it blew up.

 _September 10, 1981_  
We’ve fallen into a pattern. The morning, we try to rebuild the town. Today I found myself laying cement for a new sidewalk, while others around me fired bricks or carried water. In the afternoon, we worship until the sun goes down. 

The church didn’t survive the Black Prom, but Carrie had that rebuilt first, right over the place where it once stood – and the plaster statue of the Virgin Mary heading the altar where she preaches looks exactly like her dead mother, though she's never made note of it out loud. She doesn't need to. I can hear her thoughts.

Together, we of all faiths or none huddle into a single pew and try to make sense of her preaching about sin. I only believe half of what she says, most of the time.

We get travelers now and then. Old drop-outs who want to live the kind of life they'd thought they'd have when they tuned in and dropped out years ago or gawking young tourists backpacking through a disaster zone, wanting to snap pictures and say they were there. If Carrie can smell the sin on them she drives them out. If not, she lets them stay.

She has mercy for the children, always. The only ones left behind were orphans, or the unwanted. She is careful to keep them fed and clothed and not to work them long hours in the winter cold or the hot summer sun.

The older ones – especially the ones that remind her of her mother – for them she has no mercy. They are driven out, or die mysteriously when they displease her.

I try not to do that. 

Carrie has named this town Christ’s Blood, the old Baptist church from Mary of The Sea to Saint Margaret's.

To wash away the old sins. To wash away the meanness, she says.

_March 20, 1990_

I tried this morning to remember what I was going to do with my life. I wanted to go into psychiatry. I was going to go to Barnard, maybe to Vassar if I was lucky. 

A pain filled me along with the thought, bright and sharp – it lifted me from the ground. _You’re not leaving, Sue_ came Carrie’s voice, clear as a bell in my mind. _You’re the only one I can trust._

I busy myself with the children and try not to think again of the world outside. She sleeps with her arm thrown casually around my waist.

It's true. I can’t leave, not ever. She needs me.

_December 31st. 1999_

The decade’s about to turn. In the over twenty years since the prom we have re-constructed our town, the best way we know how without real builders to help us, with our own bleeding, shaking hands. It looks different now. Certainly more religious. We have big white crosses everywhere. Worship is mandatory, but any attempt at arguing the scripture makes Carrie panic and scream, shattering glass, crushing minds.

Enough of that. I have to think of good things. We’ve learned to grow our own food, to ignore the stink of the unfixed, moldering buildings still yet untouched by the lot of us. I suppose before I die we’ll have it all cleared away. I suppose the children I mother and teach will have children of their own and they will finally guide the way.

And every morning I think to myself that I’m glad Carrie did this. I’m glad. I’m glad. I’m glad.


End file.
